Mike Brown: How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming

Michael E. Brown (born June 5, 1965) has been a professor of planetary astronomy at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) since 2003. His team has discovered many trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs), notably the dwarf planet Eris, the only known TNO more massive than Pluto. He has humorously referred to himself as the man who killed Pluto. Source: Wikipedia. The book and author was recently the subject of a recent NPR show. On Weekend Edition Sunday, this was said about the book and author: Astronomer Mike Brown didn't mean to kill Pluto — or so he claims. Brown says the ex-ninth planet was just collateral damage in his search for the 10th. The story of that search — and the subsequent demotion of Pluto that raised the ire of elementary school students everywhere — is in his new book, How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming. You can download the podcast to that NPR show here.

Stephen Hawking, Leonard Mlodinow: The Grand Design

In December of 2010, the Lincoln Journal Star wrote this about the book and authors: "Scientists," in the words of "The Grand Design" authors Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow, "have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge." This book is their attempt to give some answers in this quest for knowledge based on recent discoveries and theory. What they are seeking are the laws that govern the universe. Ultimately this knowledge would lead to a unified "theory of everything" that physicists, including Einstein, have sought for years. In the authors' view, this theory of everything is best described by M-theory, which is a model of string theory, basically that all particles are connected by vibrating strings. Read the rest of that review here.

"Voyager 1 Spacecraft Heads For The Outer Limits" from NPR's All Things Considered

The Voyager 1 spacecraft is moving through the very outer boundary of our solar system, and moving into interstellar space. Launched in 1977, Voyager 1 accomplished its initial goals of exploring the gas giants Jupiter and Saturn, and is continuing to send back interesting data. NPR's Melissa Block talks to astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson of the Hayden Planetarium about the spacecraft and the outer limits of our sun's influence. [...] Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson directs the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. He's also author of the book "The Pluto Files: The Rise and Fall of America's Favorite Planet."

Download the NPR All Things Considered podcast for this show, here. Read the transcript for the show here. See also: Origins: Fourteen Billion Years of Cosmic Evolution, The Pluto Files: The Rise and Fall of America's Favorite Planet, NOVA - Origins, The Sky Is Not the Limit: Adventures of an Urban Astrophysicist

Celebrating Carl Sagan And 'Cosmos' from NPR: Science Friday Podcast

The television series Cosmos, which first aired 30 years ago this week, made a celebrity of science communicator Carl Sagan. In this archival 1994 Science Friday interview, Sagan discusses his book The Pale Blue Dot and shares his thoughts on manned space exploration.

Download the rebroadcast and podcast of this old Sagan interview, here. See also: Cosmos, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence, The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God

The Grand Design of Physics from KERA's Think Podcast

[2010-09-28 12:00:00] Is the search for a unified theory a misguided effort? We'll talk this hour with physicist and science writer Leonard Mlodinow, co-author with Stephen Hawking of the new book "The Grand Design" (Bantam, 2010).

Download the podcast here. See also: The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives (Vintage), Euclid's Window : The Story of Geometry from Parallel Lines to Hyperspace, Feynman's Rainbow: A Search for Beauty in Physics and in Life

Stephen Hawking's "The Grand Design" from On Point with Tom Ashbrook Podcast

Physicist Stephen Hawking and Cal Tech colleague Leonard Mlodinow weigh in on science, the ultimate questions, and God. Their new book is "The Grand Design."

Download the podcast here. The National Post also had this to say, about the book (read that article, here):

Aztecs would tell of the Lady of the Skirt of Snakes, Phoenicians about the Zophashamin, and Jews and Christians about the one true God—Jehovah. But there is one unfortunate group—the children of atheistic materialists—that has no creation myth to call its own. When an inquisitive tyke asks who created the sun, the animals, and mankind, their materialist parents can only tell them to read a book by Carl Sagan or Richard Dawkins. But what sort of story are they likely to find? Should they be told, as famed astrophysicist Stephen Hawking claims in his recent book The Grand Design that “the universe… create[d] itself from nothing”?

See also: Illustrated Theory of Everything: The Origin and Fate of the Universe, The Theory of Everything: The Origin and Fate of the Universe, New Theories of Everything, The Theory of Almost Everything: The Standard Model, the Unsung Triumph of Modern Physics